


Loop

by joely_jo



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Full Circle, Other relationships - Freeform, Post-Episode: s05e17 The Outcast, Post-Episode: s05e18 Cause and Effect, Where I try to write stories that fit in with canon, change, chocolate solves everything, hot chocolate and memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29005995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joely_jo/pseuds/joely_jo
Summary: What if, in Cause and Effect, one of Data's '252 conversations of a personal nature' included one between Riker and Troi, in the aftermath of The Outcast?'It was like they’d been kicked for a loop, back to their first weeks on the Enterprise, when neither of them really knew where they stood with one another and the unspoken words between them could have filled a tome.Relationships are constantly changing, she’d told him the night before he’d left to go down to the planet. The trouble was, this kind of change hadn’t been one he’d anticipated.'
Relationships: William Riker/Deanna Troi, William Riker/Soren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	Loop

**Author's Note:**

> Man, sticking to canon is really, really hard for these two, especially when you step away from the well-known 'Imzadi' episodes.

Loop

Before he pressed the chime on her door, he hesitated. She was probably asleep, tired as he knew she was from a week’s unbroken schedule and a full day of appointments. When he had asked her if she wanted to join them for poker this evening, she’d turned him down, citing exhaustion and a need to centre herself, so he knew it really wasn’t fair to be waking her now. But he couldn’t shake this odd feeling that was pervading through him and when there was something gnawing at him like this, the only person who could ease him was Deanna.

Several weeks had passed by since the mission with the J’naii. Since he’d risked his career, his reputation and who knew what else, to attempt to rescue Soren, only for it to all be for naught. Since Deanna had come to him in Ten Forward, pulled up a chair and carefully told him that he should make his peace with what had happened. At the time, he’d not wanted to hear a word of her compassion, so hellbent had he been on his own misery, and he’d dismissed her coldly and insensitively, roared at her to leave him the hell alone and stop shoving her nose in where it wasn’t wanted.

The silence in Ten Forward and the look on her face as she’d slowly stood and walked away still haunted him.

From that moment onwards, word of his outburst spread like wildfire and the entire crew seemed to begin treating him with kid gloves, as if he was a volatile element they couldn’t trust not to explode at the slightest thing. He supposed that the general consensus was that if he’d yelled at Deanna, he must be really, really upset.

For days, he simmered away, irrationally angry with the way he perceived that she’d encouraged him to pursue Soren, how she’d not stopped him when she must have sensed that he was about to do something rash and foolish. It was the darker side of his personality and for a while he let it run rampant through him. 

Deanna, professional as ever, gave him time to work through it. She did her duty and assisted him with that month’s crew evaluations, but the atmosphere between them had been one of two colleagues working on a necessary task. When they’d finished, she’d said goodbye and gone to the gym with Beverley rather than join him for their usual dinner in Ten Forward then coffee and hot chocolate back at his cabin. It was like they’d been kicked for a loop, back to their first weeks on the Enterprise, when neither of them really knew where they stood with one another and the unspoken words between them could have filled a tome.

 _Relationships are constantly changing_ , she’d told him the night before he’d left to go down to the planet. The trouble was, this kind of change hadn’t been one he’d anticipated.

For a long moment, he stood outside her door, wondering if she was ignoring the chime, but just as he was about to leave, heavy-hearted, the doors slid apart in a silent invitation to enter. Inside, it was half-dark, the only light coming from the bedroom. She appeared in the open doorway, wearing a long silk nightdress and with her hair tumbling loose about her shoulders, an echo of erotic nights on Betazed that he only occasionally now dwelt on. The tangible memory stopped him in his tracks. It felt familiar… and welcome – he had not felt anything but numbness, awkwardness and anger in weeks. She must have sensed it for her eyes turned softer and he abruptly realised he had not seen that look since he’d sat beside her on her couch and listened to her telling him that they would always be a part of one another’s lives. “Hello, Will. What can I do for you?”

He swallowed, tried not to stare. This was not the time for inappropriate flights of fancy. And he still had a lot of apologising to do if they were to regain their equilibrium. 

“Deanna, I’m sorry… I was going to leave this until the morning, but—”

“It’s all right,” she interrupted his apology.

He hesitated again. Why was he bothering her for something so trivial as a sense of déjà vu? Especially given how things seemed to have changed between them. “It’s stupid. I’m sorry I bothered you…”

He began to move towards the door, but she came out of the bedroom and sat down on the couch, gesturing for him to join her. She grabbed a knitted blanket and pulled it around her shoulders, thankfully hiding some of that glorious Betazed silk from his gaze. “Will… you’re here now. And you’re not bothering me. We need to stop all of this.”

He swallowed and frowned, trying to push his way through the thick brush of his own thoughts, wanting for everything to go back to how it used to be but unsure how to get there. “Deanna, I—” he began, but she interrupted him.

“I understand why you’ve been angry with me and I forgive you for it. I underestimated your feelings for her and I assumed that you could just dismiss them. And that I could make you feel better.” A touch of sadness stained her tone. “I’ve always been able to do that for you. But this time I was wrong and I overstepped my mark.” She paused. “But this distance between us, it’s not needed. I would like for you to forgive me too.”

“I have! I don’t even know why I was angry with you in the first place!” he admonished. And it was true – when he looked back on that night in Ten Forward, he honestly didn’t know why he’d treated her so horribly. He’d never spoken to her like that before, had never had need to.

She regarded him sceptically. “You meant every word you said, Will, in that moment. I could feel that.”

He frowned. She was right, of course. His anger _had_ been real, but very much misplaced. “Maybe I did, but I wasn’t thinking straight.” Twisting, he grabbed up her hand and clasped it between his own. In a rush, it all came out, “Deanna, she was important to me and she was gone and I was having to deal with that and the way I’d behaved and what I knew people were saying and thinking about me. I didn’t want to listen to you trying to counsel me out of that.”

“No. I should have recognised that.”

“I took my frustrations out on you and I shouldn’t have done that.”

Unexpectedly, she gave a short, ironic laugh. “We make a pair, don’t we? Both of us trying to apologise for something we did that neither of us really understand.” She sighed. “Do you ever wonder, Will, why we’ve become so comfortable with each other? Why we feel like we can do this kind of thing to one another?”

He didn’t have an answer to that, but as he looked at her, he realised that somewhere along the way, their friendship had become more important to him than anything else. Finally, his mind settled on the words she’d said to him the other night, “Maybe because you’re a part of my life and I’m a part of yours and that’s never going to change. No matter what.” She smiled at him, softly, and it touched her eyes again. Feeling the tension knotted inside him begin to ease, he breathed deep. “You’re important to me too, Deanna.”

“And you to me,” she said. Her lack of hesitation made him glad.

A beat passed.

“Now, what did you really come here for, Will? Because I know it wasn’t to talk about this.”

“No,” he admitted. He blew a slow breath out and leaned back, more relaxed now that the air had been cleared between them. “There was the strangest moment just now in the poker game. We were betting, I had a good hand. Beverley had a better one. I was trying to bluff my way past her, then all of a sudden I had an intense feeling. Creeping, almost.” He shivered at the recollection.

“Like you’d been there before, or knew what was about to happen?” she asked.

He twisted instantly and looked at her. She’d just taken the exact words from his mouth. He had learnt over the years to trust her in everything as often her understanding of a situation far outweighed his, but this was beginning to be too much like coincidence. “Yes,” he said. “It was… disconcerting. Then, as I’m packing away all the cards and chips, it didn’t go away, only intensified. I could almost see it all playing out in front of me, like I was watching a playback.”

“And now?”

“Now, it’s fading…”

“I knew you were coming here,” she said after a moment. “And the whole time we’ve been talking, I’ve felt like we’ve had this conversation before.”

The look on her face was almost chilling and he shivered again, standing in a flurry and beginning to pace in order to hide his discomfort. “I don’t like this,” he asserted. Suddenly, he found himself remembering a camping trip from his childhood, deep in the Alaskan wilderness, his father telling ghost stories around the fire as the moon rose and then laughing when he was too spooked to sleep.

“Déjà vu,” she said. “But it seems odd that we’ve both had the same feelings in different situations.”

“We should talk to the Captain in the morning.”

“And Beverley… I’ll mention it to Beverley.”

They nodded at each other. They’d established a course of action and there was no real reason for him to stay, but still he hovered, caught between saying good night and leaving and wanting to spend a little longer in her company.

“It’s all right, Will. If you want to stay a little longer, that’s fine. I’m going to have a hot chocolate – it might help me sleep. Do you want one?”

He thought about it as she got to her feet and walked over to the replicator. This was how they’d started building a real relationship right back in the beginning on Betazed, how he’d discovered her weakness for chocolate and realised that it was a way to spend more time with her. “Sure, yes please,” he said, quickly, before his thoughts could persuade him to turn down her offer.

She ordered two mugs of steaming chocolate and returned to the couch, handing him one. “Funny how things come full circle, isn’t it?” she said and smiled at him over the top of her mug.


End file.
